Noun Inflection in Armenian Language and Its Scientific Assessment

Abstract

There exists different viewpoints on inflection system of modern Armenian language in scientific literature. Palasyan, the founder of the new Armenian language grammar (Ashkharabar), distinguished seven inflections: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Initial, Instrumental, Locative.  Abeghyan distinguished 5 inflections in his grammar book: Nominative, Dative, Initial, Instrumental, Locative [Palasyan, 1894]. Abeghyan explained this by the fact that the Accusative case does not have its own markers, it uses either the markers of Nominative or Accusative case and therefore this inflection should be considered in syntax and not in morphology. Based on morphological principles, Abeghyan did not consider Dative and Genitive as independent inflections, he combined these two cases and made them into one (Dative-Genitive) [Abeghyan, 1906]. He called this case Genitive-Dative inflection.

The system of inflection proposed by Abeghyan was not accepted by some  scientists (A. Gharibyan, G. Sevak). They believed that Accusative and Genitive are independent inflections, and like traditional grammar there are seven cases in modern Armenian too, [Sevak, 1955: 356].